21 October BelTA – The President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, handed keys to 1,120 apartments constructed with Belarus’ assistance to Venezuelan families. The residential compound is located near the El Libertador military base in Venezuela’s state of Aragua, BelTA learnt from the Embassy of the Republic of Belarus in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Taking part in the solemn ceremony were representatives of Venezuela’s Ministry of Housing and Habitat, Governor of Aragua Tarek El Aissami and other officials. Attending the event from the Belarusian side were the Belarusian specialists who took part in the project and also the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Belarus to Venezuela, Oleg Pafyorov. 

Nicolas Maduro thanked Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. The Venezuelan leader added that three years ago when the sides got down to the joint project, it was difficult to imagine that such a beautiful residential neighborhood would appear here in the near future.

The Great Housing Mission program was launched by the Venezuelan government in 2011 and is designed to provide over 2 million Venezuelans with quality housing and improve living standards. Over 400,000 apartments have been constructed in Venezuela since the program was launched. Belarusian builders have already built about 4,000 housing units. In line with the contracts, they continue working to construct over 16,000 apartments.

All in all, in accordance with the Belarusian-Venezuelan agreements, Belarus will provide assistance in building about 4,500 social welfare housing units for low-income Venezuelans near the El Libertador military base by the end of 2014. 

The embassy noted that Belarus and Venezuela are currently engaged in about 85 joint projects in the field of housing construction, joint oil extraction, installation of gas supply service, power engineering, agriculture, industry and science. 

Belarusian specialists helped construct a residential neighborhood comprising 2,520 apartments in the city of Maracay, Aragua, a factory to produce conventional bricks with the capacity of 25 million bricks per year in the state of Miranda and two facilities to assemble Belarus tractors and MAZ trucks in the state of Barinas.

Belarusians are also building Venezuela’s first agro-town and a factory to recycle electric batteries.